Sunday, May 1, 2011

When Censorship is Awesome, Part III

The censor glared at me censoriously and yelled at the gathering crowd in Burmese. They did what comes naturally to crowds everywhere: managed, against all physical laws, to collectively hide behind each other. The gun toter leaned against the wall, toting away calmly.

The engineer came up the steps and a hurried conversation ensued. After a few minutes and many hand gestures he turned to me.

"He say he cannot go back in with you. He say you demon. Bad luck."

I was torn. On the one hand, I was happy that my awesome vokillz had literally scared the hell out of this man- a military goon in the employ of the ruling Junta- a government as ugly as the name sounded (True story- their acronym used to be SLORC. Way greasier than COBRA). On the other hand, I wasn't allowed to record without him there. My mountain of rock was in danger of becoming a rather sissified molehill of instrumental ditherings. The crowd was pointing at me. In a corner I saw a little boy wearing no pants and a shirt that said "Orgasm Donor" (why someone would give that to the Red Cross to donate I don't . . . okay, I do. Who am I kidding? That was brilliant.) Looked at me and headbanged wildly.

Awesome.

Long story short, the censor refused to go back and our recording was delayed for a day while a replacement oppressor could be found- one who was immune to my demonic influences. All went well until, after four songs were finished, the government changed their mind. Suddenly, while finishing up "You Look Hot In That E String", the studio was rushed by MPs, a gun was pointed to my head, and I was told the recordings were "Finish."

Indeed. I managed to sneak 4 songs (out of 8) out of the studio and make 50 copies. The rest were left in the studio, which was destroyed by flooding a few months later. And thus ended my attempt at Myanmar Death Metal.